


keeping all the things I knew inside

by Sholio



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Fix-It, Gen, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Not being dead is supposed to be the better outcome. But it's a long, long trip back to Berhert from the asteroid field that used to be Ego's planet. (Or: Fixit fic in which Yondu has to deal with having a future, and a family, and feelings. None of which he's prepared to cope with.)





	keeping all the things I knew inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallerthanzero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallerthanzero/gifts).



It's a long, long trip back to Berhert at a reasonable jump rate, made even longer because the Quadrant, after being ejected from an exploding ship and then nearly swallowed by a planet, can't handle more than a few jumps at a time. And even those usually come with sporadic and unpredictable breakdowns: pipes bursting and electrical components failing.

Yondu doesn't really mind the constant breakdowns. Gives him something to do. Keeps Kraglin and Quill busy too, in different parts of the ship -- no point in all three of them working on the same problem when they all know the Eclector's systems inside and out.

He's hunched in the cramped space on top of the main coolant tank, working on a stubborn leak, when Rocket's sarcastic voice calls from down below, "Not to interrupt your hiding or anything, but where the hell is the asteroid-tracking array on this piece of junk?"

Yondu squirms awkwardly over to the edge. "Ain't got one."

"What kind of a piece-of-crap ship," Rocket snaps, staring up at him with arms crossed, "doesn't have proper nav comms?"

"I am Groot!" chirps the twig, perched on his shoulder.

"The kind that's just a piece of a bigger ship," Yondu fires back, and there's supposed to be an insult at the end of that sentence, but he has to interrupt himself to cough.

"You take the oxy-thing off again, huh?" Rocket says. Yondu doesn't bother to dignify that with a reply, partly because he can't. Coughing _hurts._ "Well, do whatever you want, idiot, but if you pass out and fall off that tank, I'm telling Quill why. _After_ I record it for posterity, because that shit's funny."

"Try it an' I'll shave you," Yondu says, ruthlessly clamping down on the tickle in his throat.

He looks over the edge of the tank to see Rocket staring up at him with a hard-to-read expression. "You sound just like Quill sometimes, you know that?"

Yondu drops a wrench on him.

Rocket hops lightly out of the way and the wrench clatters on the floor. There's a disgruntled "I am Groot!" from his shoulder, and Yondu mashes down a pang of guilt. Didn't mean to throw anything at the twig.

"I know!" Rocket says to Groot. "Not careful _at all._ So, fine, if that's how you are today, I guess I'm gonna go rig something up all on my lonesome so we don't get our hull holed while we're hanging here dead in the water ... don't bother to thank me, just take me for granted, like everyone else does ..."

Rocket's complaining (reflexive complaining, Yondu thinks; he's pretty sure even Rocket himself hardly notices it anymore) dies away in the distance. Yondu assumes Groot went with him, until there's a dry, twiggy rattle at the edge of the tank and the kid's head pops up, twigs retracting into what passes for his hands.

"Hey there, twig," Yondu says, after another wet, wrenching cough. "Sorry about that. Was tryin' to hit him, not you." Or, well, neither of them, really. He knows Rocket is fast enough to dodge. It's the principle of the thing that matters.

"I am Groot!" One small finger points imperiously to the oxygen concentrator hanging off Yondu's collar.

"You too, huh?" Sometimes it's easier to just give in. At least none of the other idiots are nearby to see him getting ordered around by a little twig he could pick up in one hand. He clips the business end of the tubes into place in his nostrils. "Happy now?"

"I am Groot!"

Groot ends up perching on his leg, watching him work and handing him tools. It's quiet. Easy. Comfortable. Makes him remember -- he hasn't thought about this in years -- how Quill used to do that when he was a little kid, just kind of hang around and watch Yondu do stuff, like watching someone doing perfectly ordinary ship repairs is the most fascinating thing in the world.

 

***

 

So the thing is, not dying is supposed to be the _good_ outcome. And Yondu figures it mostly is.

It's just, he kinda hadn't planned on it. It's not that he came to Ego's planet _wanting_ to die. It's just that he figured he'd beaten the odds enough times that his number was bound to come up pretty soon, and fighting a planet isn't the sort of thing that tends to end well for anybody.

And some deeper part of him thinks maybe it would've been right and proper to have his bones rest beside the bones of all those kids he took to their deaths.

But then there was Quill, stubborn brave Quill, somehow hoarding a spark of Ego's light and -- Yondu doesn't even know what he did, doesn't think he wants to know, but somehow Peter held Yondu's body and soul together long enough to get them on board the Quadrant. He might be in rough shape, but he ain't dead, and that's not an outcome he saw coming.

He doesn't regret saying the things he said, with what he thought were his last dying breaths. Doesn't regret it because he should've said them a long time ago. Should've done a lot of things different, too, along the way.

But he wasn't expecting he'd still be alive to answer for those words. No wonder he and Quill can't quite manage to look each other in the face.

The Quadrant somehow manages to be, at the same time, too big and too small. Too big, because Yondu can't take a step without remembering too well what the ship is _supposed_ to be like, with a rowdy crew of Ravagers filling these halls -- drinking, fighting, joking, sleeping in heaps wherever they could find a patch of floor. The ship used to be much larger than its current reduced state, but the Ravagers filled it all out of proportion to their actual numbers.

And yet it's also too small because, even though eight people should've rattled around in the remnant of his ship like a bunch of beans in a cup, it seems like they're always tripping over each other.

Especially when their main drive up and stops working, some 450 jumps into a 700-jump trip. It's a nothin' place they're stranded in, an asteroid field with no signs of habitation except a couple of automated mining rigs. If they really have to, they can limp over to one of those and strip some parts for repairs ... probably. Nebula took the Quadrant's last and only M-ship when she left, so they're stuck in a floating hunk of space junk for the time being, working on the drive and bickering with each other.

Yondu mostly just tries to avoid the rest of them, but that means he's alone with his thoughts, which ain't the most comfortable thing, either.

He feels _raw_ , in a way he doesn't remember feeling since his early days on Stakar's ship, when he was an angry young ex-slave with not much to him except fury and something he now recognizes as grief -- grief for the parents who betrayed him, grief for the childhood he never got to have. Over the years he learned to swallow it down, 'til everything scabbed over: guilt and loss and anger, love and hate, the things he misses, the _people_ he misses, the way he feels about the things he's done --

Until everything that happened during the mutiny and the fight on Ego's planet ripped the scar tissue away, leaving him raw and bleeding, feeling too many damn things -- too many things he doesn't know how to feel anymore. 

It'll scab over again, he supposes. Just give it time.

He tries to think about the future instead of the past. Make plans. He'll get another crew together, he thinks. He doesn't have any desire to stay on the Quadrant, with ghosts lurking around the turns of every hallway, behind each laser-scarred bulkhead. No, what he needs is a new ship. Kraglin'll probably want to be part of that. Gonna be weird to run a crew without the ones who were there with him since the beginning -- the loyal and the mutineers alike. Taserface was an asshole, but he's been on Yondu's crew since he parted ways with Stakar. So many of them were. Tullk, Oblo, Gef ...

But he built a crew from scratch once before, and he didn't know half the tricks then that he knows now. He can start over again.

He tries not to think about how much easier it was to start over at twenty, when cutting ties to the past was as simple as severing a throat with a knife.

 

***

 

He sits outside the galley, lounging against the wall, and listens to the voices and laughter from within. There's music playing softly, Quill's Earth music; Yondu catches himself tapping his finger to the beat. Gang's all here, from the sound of things. They've even managed to entice Kraglin out of wherever the hell _he's_ been holed up on the ship lately. It's good to hear him laugh. The mutiny's been weighing heavy on him, Yondu knows. Kraglin's been avoiding him as hard as he's avoiding Quill.

A ration pack lands in his lap, already warm with the heat-tab popped. He looks up, startled. Gamora has appeared out of nowhere, possibly dropped out of the ceiling for all he knows. The woman is quiet as a Hraxian stealthcat. He didn't even notice she wasn't with the group in the galley anymore. He wonders if they noticed her leave, either.

"What's this, woman?"

"Dinner." She sits down next to him with a half-eaten ration pack of her own. As she neatly cuts off a bite with a tiny little knife, she jerks her head at the damn oxy concentrator, sticking out of his pocket. "Aren't you supposed to be wearing that?"

"Gets in my way."

"Make you a deal," she says through a mouthful. "You wear it while I'm here, and take it off after I'm gone."

"Or?" Yondu wants to know. 

"Or I'll put it on you, and we both know I'm stronger than you." She holds up the knife she's eating with. "Don't make me stick this in your ear."

He purses his lips to whistle (not seriously, just to remind M'lady Smart-ass that strength ain't everything) before he remembers that he doesn't have the arrow anymore. It's gone, along with Ego's planet. He still feels naked without it. Blaster ain't the same.

But that's life. Time passes. Nothing lasts. Nothing at all.

And his lungs feel like a couple bags of wet cement, so he puts the damn thing on. She did bring him dinner, after all.

Gamora smiles quietly over her ration pack.

She, at least, looks pretty good. Relaxed -- well, as much as a Daughter of Thanos ever is. Yondu had other things on his mind when Nebula left the ship, such as breathing, but he gets the impression that she and her sister worked some stuff out, and it's done her good.

He's glad.

And she makes Peter smile, which is also good. 

Quill's not sleeping well; Yondu knows this because it's even harder to avoid him when the two of them are up at the same random hours of the dark shift, working on different parts of the engines. Also, with that pale skin Quill's got, the bruises under his eyes look like someone's been hitting him in the face with a hammer.

"I am not sure if you are aware," Gamora says quietly, and Yondu glances at her, "that I lost my entire world when I was a small child. Thanos destroyed my people. He killed my parents. My brothers, one older, one younger. My grandparents. I do not know what he saw in me, of all the population of Zen-Whoberi, that made him choose to keep me alive."

 _I do,_ Yondu thinks, but he says only, "Sorry."

"It was a very long time ago," she says after a pause. "And ... Thanos killed Drax's wife and daughter, as well. He still grieves for them, even if he rarely shows it. Mantis's entire world is lost -- whether truly lost, or merely lost to her, we are not sure."

"Thirty-five years I ran a Ravager crew, girl. People with happy home lives don't run off to be mercs and pirates. Ain't no kind of sob story I haven't heard."

"Good," she says. "Then I don't have to explain to you that you are not as special as you seem to think you are. Not on this ship. And I believe suffering in noble isolation is out of fashion this decade."

Yondu gives her an appraising look. Girl is an assassin. She's done some bad things. But this is the first time he's seen this hard side of her; around Quill, she only seems to show the soft. "Is it, now," he says slowly.

"So I am told." She eats the last bite of the ration cake off the end of her knife and gets up, tossing the empty carton into Yondu's lap. "Mind tossing that in the recycler for me?"

"Better'n being introduced to that knife."

Her smile is quick and beautiful, as she turns away and slips through the door of the galley to rejoin her friends.

 

***

 

They've been stuck in the ass-end of nowhere for three days when another ship drops out of the jump point and noses its slow way alongside them.

There's a time for sulking down in the engine room, and this ain't it. When there's a strange ship in their space and they can't jump out, it's time for all hands on deck. Yondu climbs up to the flight deck, noticing idly that he's only slightly winded when he gets to the top, as opposed to about ready to keel over, which would've been the case a few days ago.

As he steps on deck, where the rest of the gang are already gathered, there's a quick brush of fur. Small fingers clamp for an instant over his own, and something cold and hard and thrice-damned _familiar_ is pressed into his palm.

"So I was gonna give it back to you proper-like whenever you decided to stop being a hermit," Rocket murmurs. "But I think we need you armed now."

Yondu looks down at the arrow in his hand, the shaft as smooth as if it was never broken, and he doesn't have the slightest idea what to say.

Then he looks up at the ship looming in the forward viewport and words come to his lips anyway. "That dirt-sucking, A'askavarian-humping _bastard!"_

"Uh ... friends of yours?" Quill asks over his shoulder. Kraglin's staring at the ship with a look somewhere between surprise and horror. He takes a step back, putting himself a little closer to Yondu.

"No," Yondu says flatly, staring at the _Starhawk_ looming in front of them. At that point he notices Gamora and Rocket sharing a look. "What'n the hell did you two do?"

"Called your old Ravager buddies," Rocket says without even a trace of apology.

"You idiots want to get us blown to kingdom come?"

"Hey -- guys -- they're hailing us," Quill says. "Someone named Stakar?"

Well, if they're gonna die, might as well get it over with. Yondu pushes Quill out of the way, getting a glare for his trouble, and taps the screen, which is instantly filled with Stakar's ugly mug.

"Udonta," Stakar says.

"Ogord." When it comes down to it, he's not quite sure if he believes that Stakar would really treat them like they never meant nothing to each other -- rob them, maybe kill them, leave them stranded in space. Still, there's two ways he could play this: go down with guns blazing, or take one more shot at trying to ... hell, he doesn't even know. Stakar's made it clear where he stands. But Yondu salutes anyway, fist to chest, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Kraglin following suit.

Peter just looks baffled.

And Yondu has no idea what game Stakar is playing, none at all, when a trace of a smile curves the corner of the old bastard's mouth. "Well, Yondu, after we've come all this way, aren't you going to invite us onto your ship?"

 

***

 

The whole group heads down to the airlock trailing a babble of insults, attempted explanations, and general confusion -- business as usual around here, from what Yondu can tell, but it's a lot more entertaining and less frustrating when he's watching it from the outside rather than getting caught up in the middle of it.

"What the fuck were you _thinking?"_ he rages at Rocket.

"I told them what you did on Ego's planet!" Rocket flares back, too angry to fall back on blaming Gamora, who is trying to get a word in (and failing). "They didn't know the whole story. Now they do!"

"It wasn't none of your damn _business!"_

"Is anyone going to tell me what's --" (Peter)

"Would all of you shut up for --" (Gamora)

"I am Groot!"

Drax, Kraglin, and the bug girl trail along at the back of the group. At any other time, Yondu'd be relieved they've got the sense to stay out of it. Right now he's so pissed he's about to start drilling every last one of these idiots with his arrow.

They had no _right._

"Yondu." Peter catches his arm. Goddamn Peter Quill -- afraid of what can't hurt him ( _why'd you ever seriously believe I was gonna EAT you, idjit?_ ) and never afraid of Yondu in the slightest when he really ought to be. "Yondu, that guy on the screen wore the flames."

"Sure did," Yondu snaps, wrenching his arm away.

"You always told me we stayed away from the other Ravager clans because Ravagers don't get along with each other." Peter sounds equal parts angry and puzzled. "It's every clan for themselves. But that guy knew you. You _saluted_ him."

"Really, Yondu?" Rocket says, muzzle wrinkling as his lips curl away from his teeth. "You never told him?"

"How was I supposed to fucking tell him without telling him about Ego?" Yondu fires at the interfering little rat.

"Wait, Peter doesn't know?" Gamora says. "Rocket --"

"What the fuck is going on?" Peter snaps at Yondu. "What is _wrong_ with you?" His voice is ragged; he looks utterly exhausted, worn to the bone, which probably isn't helping with any of the flaring tempers around here, come to think of it.

Peter grabs a fistful of Yondu's collar, and of course, _of course_ that's the moment when the airlock opens and Stakar strides in, flanked by Martinex and a four-armed Silari that Yondu doesn't recognize.

There's a very awkward silence. Peter lets go of Yondu and takes a step back. It's interesting, Yondu thinks, in a corner of his brain, that even though Peter doesn't know who Stakar is, there's still something about him that commands respect. 

He'd been too distracted to notice on Contraxia, but Stakar hardly seems to have aged in the last twenty-five years. He's a little grayer, but he still moves like a much younger man, compact and muscular and controlled.

And Yondu realizes, as he almost-but-not-quite manages to meet Stakar's eyes, that he's not entirely sure who's actually in charge on this ship. By rights, it ought to be him. But it's Peter's crew, and he's already turned over the Quadrant to Peter in his head, if not in reality just yet. His crew mutinied on him, and now they're all dead except for Kraglin, and he thinks calling himself the captain of one-quarter of a ship and one crewmate is, at this point, kind of a stretch.

So there's a long moment of general bafflement when no one is quite sure what to do (at least there aren't any weapons involved ... yet) and then Kraglin hesitantly makes a move as if to bring his fist up to his chest -- he's obviously waiting for Yondu's cue, but doesn't want to wait too long. Yondu salutes, and Kraglin, looking vastly relieved, follows along. 

Peter does not salute. Instead, because he's Peter Goddamn Quill, he says, "So who exactly the hell are you, again?"

Stakar looks genuinely amused at this. "Well, son, the answer to that question depends on who _you_ are."

"Star-Lord," Peter says, "hero of the battle of Xandar, otherwise known as Peter Quill --" and there's only the faintest hesitation. "-- Udonta. Peter Quill Udonta."

Yondu stares at him. 

So does almost everyone else in the room, except for Rocket, who looks smug. Peter has a kind of fragile defiance about him and is very carefully not looking at Yondu. Instead he keeps his eyes fixed on Stakar, who is giving him a narrow-eyed, appraising look.

"How old are you, boy?" Stakar says after a moment.

"Uh ..." Peter visibly does the math in his head. "Thirty-two and a half standard. Thirty-four Terran."

"You're Terran?"

Yondu starts to speak. Stakar jerks a hand at him. He shuts up.

"Half," Peter says. He's still not looking at Yondu, but Yondu gets the impression he's starting to regret opening his mouth.

"What's the other half?"

"I don't know," Peter says. "It was Celestial, but that part's ... gone. I think." He swallows. "I don't know what I am now."

This comes out raw and hurt-sounding. Gamora makes a slight movement forward, as if in an unconscious attempt to lend support. And all Yondu can think is that, while he's spent the last couple of weeks trying to avoid ripping the healing scabs off his own wounds, Peter's been bleeding in silence.

Apparently he hasn't learned a damn thing about being a father after all.

 _Peter Quill Udonta,_ he thinks, dazed.

It sounds wrong. It sounds right.

Gamora moves up to Peter's side. "Welcome on board, Captain Ogord," she says politely, putting an end to the conversation about Peter's parentage with perfect first-mate poise -- or co-captain poise; hard to say. Yondu wonders briefly if it might be possible to snake her away from Peter for his own crew when he leaves (knowing full well it's not). "Would you and your crewmates care for a drink?"

 

***

 

It's strictly business, nothing personal, over drinks in the galley. Stakar is offering parts and assistance with repairs. Yondu handles negotiations, not so much by choice as because the others defer to him without making a big deal about it. Apparently the question of who's in charge, or at least who gets to speak for them to the Ravagers, isn't as much in doubt as he'd thought.

Gamora sits very close to Peter and has her hand clamped firmly on his, under the table where they probably think nobody can see it. Peter, for a wonder, hardly speaks at all. He keeps looking between Yondu and Stakar, his eyes shying away from Yondu's whenever Yondu looks his way.

They agree on a transfer of parts and the loan of two of Stakar's mechanics. Stakar waves off Yondu's attempts to bring up the topic of payment. "You know the code, Yondu."

He does know the code. A Ravager ship in need of assistance can always rely on the nearest Ravager ship to help. But he also knows that, since he's not a Ravager -- not according to Stakar -- they owe him nothing. For over twenty-five years, Yondu's Ravagers have consisted of one mothership and one clan alone. And he doesn't want to think about what it might mean, that Stakar's offering no-strings-attached help, because that's another raw, bleeding wound he doesn't dare tear open; that's a wound that might bleed him to death.

Martinex hasn't said much through all of this, except to be drawn into a couple of brief conversations with Kraglin and Drax. Stakar's other crewmate, the Silari, went back to the _Starhawk_. She wasn't there for ... everything. Yondu thinks that might be significant but he's not sure if it is.

"Yondu," Stakar says at the end, when he rises to go. He turns casually, slides a hand across the table. "You aren't wearing the flames." He lifts his hand; a Ravager flame patch is underneath. "Thought you might want to do something about that."

There's a sharp intake of breath from Kraglin. Yondu _can't_ breathe. He picks up the patch. Stares at it. Sure, he wore it for the last twenty-five years, up until taking it off in the brig after the mutiny. But ... this feels different.

He hasn't cried since he was a child. He's sure not gonna do it now. But ... he can't breathe. 

Stakar grips his shoulder, a brief firm pressure, but when Yondu looks up, all he sees is Stakar's blue-clad back as he leaves. Martinex rises and claps him on the shoulder, with a brief, glittering smile, and then he's out of the room, after his captain.

Rocket kicks Yondu in the shin. "Breathe, asshole."

Yondu kicks him back, or kicks _at_ him, anyway. He takes a slow breath and fastens the flames to his coat.

When he looks up, most of the rest of them have left (more quietly than he realized this bunch were capable of), all but Peter and Kraglin. Kraglin's just on his way out; he pauses in the doorway, meets Yondu's eyes for the first time in the last couple of weeks, and hesitantly raises fist to chest.

Yondu responds back with a quick acknowledging salute and a brief smile, because a captain has responsibilities to his crew, damn it, even if his crew consists of one (accidental) mutineer, and maybe it's about time for him to start acting like a proper captain again.

Kraglin appears to crumple a little, salutes back with a double thump of fist to chest so vigorous he's going to break a rib if he's not careful, and ducks out. Probably off to sew flame patches on everything he owns, Yondu thinks.

It's just him and Peter now, Peter looking sleepy with his chin propped on his fist. And Yondu could leave, but it feels like too much effort to get up.

"Peter Quill Udonta, huh?" Yondu says, running a callused fingertip over the edge of the flames.

"It seemed like the right thing to say at that particular time," Peter says quietly. He smiles faintly. "I still don't know why I can't get anyone to go for Star-Lord. ... So, I was gonna ask who that guy is, but I think I know. He's your, uh, he's your Yondu, isn't he? He's your ... you."

Maybe it's because they're both equally sleep-deprived at this point, but this actually makes sense. "Yeah. More or less."

"So what's the _real_ reason you never let your crew have anything to do with the other Ravagers, anyway?" Peter's voice is casual, but his eyes are anything but.

"It's a long story and I'm gonna need more booze." Assuming he can stay awake for it; he has a feeling he's running up against the limits of his healing body. But hell, if he starts coughing blood and keels over, it probably won't kill him. Probably.

Peter fetches another bottle and shoves Yondu's cup across the table after topping it off.

And Yondu tells him.

Everything.

Some of it, Peter knows already. Yondu never tried to hide that he grew up as a Kree slave (that's the kind of secret that can ruin a man, if you let other people pick the time and place when it comes out; better to own that shit from the get-go). And Ego already told Peter what happened to the other kids. But he can see the pieces clicking into place as Peter puts together twenty-five years of hints and half-overheard conversations and little things that never quite added up.

They end up taking their reminiscing party off to Yondu's quarters because the others are obviously leaving them alone (Yondu senses Gamora's green hand in this) and they're tying up the galley. Anyway, it's more comfortable here, with a bed to half-sit, half-lie on, and the stars outside the viewports, with just a sliver of Stakar's ship visible from this angle.

"I can't believe I had a whole bunch of Ravager aunts and uncles all this time and you never told me, you jerk," Peter murmurs, but not with any actual heat. He looks half asleep.

"They're not -- I wasn't -- don't make me whistle up the arrow, boy."

Peter laughs quietly, with his face mashed against Yondu's pillows -- and shit, Yondu wishes it hadn't taken him twenty-something years to finally admit to himself that he really does love the hell out of this idiot kid.

Idiot kid who currently looks like he got run over by an antigrav loader. "You ain't been sleepin' much, huh?" Yondu says, looking down at him.

"Pot, kettle," Peter mutters, waving a hand in the air.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Yondu, have you looked in a mirror lately? You look like the walking dead." Peter heaves a sigh and rolls over a little, turning his face away. "Half the time," he says to the wall, "I'm afraid you're hiding how bad you're actually doing -- because you _do_ that, I know you do -- and we're just going to find your body tucked in a corner around the ship somewhere."

Yondu's silent for a moment. It seems like this is a day for getting the breath knocked out of him. Then he punches Peter in the shoulder.

"What?" Peter mutters in a disgruntled tone, not bothering to move.

"I ain't dying. Idiot."

"Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that? It's not like you'd tell anybody if you were. And coughing up blood is usually considered a bad sign."

"It's a pretty normal sign if you got your lungs froze. Anyway, it ain't happenin' much anymore."

"Not actually helping," Peter tells the wall.

"Peter?" Yondu says, and he can feel Peter's sleepy attention perk up, since he uses his name so rarely. "Go the fuck to sleep."

"Only if you follow your own advice, old man," Peter grumbles.

Yondu's pretty sure Peter's gonna be asleep in a minute in any case, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea, and the bed's more than big enough for two.

 

***

 

He wakes up at the feeling of something crawling on him: wakes with a whistle, which isn't the first time he's done that since they were fished out of deep space, but this is the first time the red glow and low, comforting hum responds like he's used to.

"It's Groot," Peter says blearily, and Peter's hand nudges at him. "Groot's decided to join us. Go back to sleep and stop trying to make holes in your friends, dumbass."

Yondu props himself up on his elbow. His quarters are nearly dark; he doesn't remember turning out the lights, which means he apparently managed to sleep through one or another of Peter's oddball friends coming in to check on them. Not a good thing for a Ravager captain. 

He catches the glimmer of Groot's eyes down near his leg, and there's a quick flurry of motion before something drops to the bed between them, near his shoulder, with a tiny thump.

"Hi, Groot," Peter murmurs, cupping a hand over the little body. "Sleep now, okay?"

"I am Groot." Very soft and sleepy-sounding.

After a moment, just when Yondu thinks Peter's fallen asleep again, there's a soft voice out of the dark. "You're planning on leaving, right? When we've got the drive up and running, and get back to our usual parts of space."

"Don't really see a way around it," Yondu answers quietly. "Ship can't serve two captains. You and I both know we'd come to blows, sooner than later. You gotta go out there, make your own way in the galaxy. An' so do I."

Somewhat to his surprise, Peter doesn't argue, though there's a brief, thoughtful silence. "You'll be taking the Quadrant, then, when we get the Milano fixed --"

"No," Yondu says emphatically. "Don't want it. I'll get a new ship. This one's yours now." He laughs a little to himself. "It was gonna be yours anyway, one of these days, when my sins caught up with me. Just meant to give you a little, er, _more_ of it."

More silence from Peter's side of the bed; he sounds slightly strangled when he says, "You asshole. Why didn't you ever _tell_ me any of this?"

"Known me all these years an' you really have to ask that?"

Peter groans softly. "Right. Forget I said anything."

"You grew up good, Quill," Yondu says into the dark. "You grew up real good. And that's all on you, not on me."

Out of nowhere, fingers close on his wrist, squeezing lightly. He sometimes can't get over how big Peter's hands are; there are still times when he thinks they should be small.

"You had more to do with it than you think," Peter says. "Look, I get what you're saying about not staying on the same ship, I think you're probably right, but ... don't be in a big hurry to rush off, okay? I mean, Berhert's a big place. Gamora and I, we've been talking about maybe, uh, building something there? Like a permanent base of operations, so we have somewhere to come back to. Nobody else on the whole planet right now, 'cept maybe a few other thieves and lowlives like us. And, you know, you could stick around and help us scout out the forest and find a good place to build on, you and Kraglin, if you wanted. It's just. You could. If you want."

His fingers are still wrapped lightly around Yondu's wrist.

"Think about it," Yondu says, which is about the closest he can come, right now, to making definite plans for a future he didn't think he'd have.

"I think I saw some mountains on Berhert when we were crashing," Peter muses. He yawns. "A secret pirate lair in the mountains ... next best thing to a secret supervillain hideout in the mountains. Which would be _awesome."_

"I understood most of the individual words you just said. It's the whole thing that don't make sense."

"Probably an Earth thing," Peter says, and yawns again.

"I am Groot," comes a small, complaining voice from between them.

"We're keepin' the twig awake, I guess." Probably oughta ask Rocket about learning Groot's talk, if he's gonna be sticking around these idiots for awhile.

"Well, you know what that means, Yondu," and he can _hear_ the dumbass grin in Peter's voice, feel it in the light pressure of the hand that's still curled loosely around his wrist. "Go the fuck to sleep."


End file.
